GEORGE WESTINGHOUSE Archive

After witnessing a train wreck, where the two engineers saw each other but were unable to stop the train in time using the existing breaks as the brakemen from car to car applied brakes on each car manually, George Westinghouse devised a rail road braking system using compressed air, when he was only 22 years old, in 1869. The Locomotive had a reservoir and a valve and a single pipe that ran along the entire length of the train, allowing the engineer to simultaneously apply breaks on all the cars and refill the system with air that filled up the